Tag: Natalie Tennant

Public Policy Polling (1/20-23, West Virginia voters, no trendlines):

Joe Manchin (D-inc): 50

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 41

Undecided: 10

Joe Manchin (D-inc): 57

David McKinley (R): 28

Undecided: 14

Joe Manchin (D-inc): 60

John Raese (R): 31

Undecided: 9

(MoE: ±2.9%)

I think, if you were to try and set up West Virginians’ feelings about their politicians as a mathematical equation, it would look something like this: Joe Manchin > Shelley Moore Capito > (very large gap) > various other Dems > various other Republicans. This can be seen in PPP’s sample this week, which starts with their look at the 2012 Senate race, with Manchin beating all Republican opponents and having made the jump to federal office with sky-high approvals down somewhat but mostly intact, at 52/32 (with much of the drop in approvals coming from liberals, believe it or not). Capito is in similar very-positive terrain at 54/30, but nevertheless loses to Manchin, probably because of the disparity in Dem vs. GOP registrations in West Virginia and that there’s little Dem defection from Manchin.

Public Policy Polling (1/20-23, West Virginia voters, no trendlines):

Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 40

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 48

Undecided: 12

Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 54

Clark Barnes (R): 22

Undecided: 24

Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 49

Betty Ireland (R): 32

Undecided: 19

Earl Ray Tomblin (D): 53

Mike Stuart (R): 20

Undecided: 28

John Perdue (D): 33

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 52

Undecided: 15

John Perdue (D): 41

Clark Barnes (R): 23

Undecided: 36

John Perdue (D): 37

Betty Ireland (R): 37

Undecided: 26

John Perdue (D): 41

Mike Stuart (R): 21

Undecided: 38

Natalie Tennant (D): 37

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 49

Undecided: 13

Natalie Tennant (D): 49

Clark Barnes (R): 23

Undecided: 28

Natalie Tennant (D): 43

Betty Ireland (R): 32

Undecided: 26

Natalie Tennant (D): 48

Mike Stuart (R): 22

Undecided: 31

Rick Thompson (D): 29

Shelley Moore Capito (R): 54

Undecided: 18

Rick Thompson (D): 34

Clark Barnes (R): 24

Undecided: 43

Rick Thompson (D): 31

Betty Ireland (R): 37

Undecided: 32

Rick Thompson (D): 33

Mike Stuart (R): 22

Undecided: 45

(MoE: ±2.9%)

If you have the stamina to wade through all 16 of these gubernatorial permutations, you can see a definite pattern: Dems win big, unless the GOP gets Shelley Moore Capito into the race, in which case she’s favored (or unless Rick Thompson wins the nomination, as he manages to lose to Betty Ireland). The question PPP asks specifically says “If the candidates for governor this year were…” so, however, keep in mind that Capito has basically declined to run in the special election. Nevertheless, she hasn’t ruled out a run in 2012, so assuming these numbers stay valid for another year, there’s a distinct possibility that whichever Dem wins the special election in 2011 could have a very short tenure if Capito does decide to run in 2012. In fact, if Earl Ray Tomblin doesn’t win the Dem primary, we could have two one-year gubernatorial terms in a row. Tomblin starts in a good place, though, with 42/20 approvals; Betty Ireland seems to fare the best of the “other” GOPers, with 33/19 faves.

If you’re wondering, here’s who all these various people are:

Earl Ray Tomblin: Democratic state Senate president and acting Governor until the October 2011 special election

John Perdue: Democratic state Treasurer

Natalie Tennant: Democratic Secretary of State

Rick Thompson: Democratic state House speaker

Shelley Moore Capito: Republican Rep. from WV-02

Clark Barnes: Republican state Senator

Betty Ireland: Republican ex-SoS

Mike Stuart: Republican state party chair

• CA-Sen: Does Meg Whitman seriously not have anything better to do with her money? Rumors are bubbling up that she’s actually considering a return to politics… which, if it’s going to be in 2012, would mean a run against Dianne Feinstein (which, of course, would mean a run against the state’s most popular politician in a presidential year, instead of an open seat run in a down year for Dems).

• MT-Sen: Republican businessman (and one-time LG candidate) Steve Daines did some serious fundraising in the last few months since announcing his candidacy, hauling in $225K since his announcement, with the majority of that money coming from in-state. The main target he’s probably trying to scare with that money isn’t Jon Tester (who has about $500K CoH), but Republican Rep. Denny Rehberg, who’s usually the GOPer most associated with this race but has sounded noncommittal so far; I’m sure Daines would like to see Rehberg stay out of the Senate primary. Rehberg has $594K. One other Montana Senate item, although it hopefully won’t be an issue any time soon: the Montana legislature is considering whether, in the event of a Senate vacancy, to switch over from gubernatorial appointment to a fast special election instead.

• OH-Sen: Quinnipiac has a poll today of the Ohio Senate race, but, like their Pennsylvania poll last month, the lack of an obvious Republican opponent means the matchup is just against Generic R. Sherrod Brown does pretty well against G.R., especially considering that actual named candidates tend not to do as well as generics at least at this stage in the game; Brown leads 45-33, and has an approval of 45/25. This is definitely a race where we shouldn’t start celebrating short of the end zone, though, considering that PPP recently found Brown in much more of a pickle, and even Qpac points out he’s far from the 50% mark and in “decent but not overwhelming” shape. The Cleveland Plain Dealer’s writeup of the poll spends a lot of ink talking up Rep. Steve LaTourette as a possible GOP candidate; while he’d bring some geographic strengths to the race that other GOPers might not, there hasn’t been any indication so far that he’s interested.

• RI-Sen, RI-Gov: Sheldon Whitehouse looks like he’s dodged at least one credible candidate in 2012; John Robitaille, who came close in the 2010 gubernatorial race (although that was only because of the center-left vote split between Lincoln Chafee and Frank Caprio) and has expressed interest in running for something else, now seems focused on a retry in the 2014 gubernatorial race. Partly, he admits, that’s because running statewide as a Republican in Rhode Island in a presidential year would be a kamikaze mission.

• WV-Gov: SoS Natalie Tennant has gotten endless mentions as a likely gubernatorial candidate, but with the clock ticking to the now-only-nine-months-away special election, she’s made her candidacy official as of yesterday.

• FL-25: OK, here’s a trivia question for you all (which I genuinely don’t know the answer to)… which House freshman holds the record for the shortest partial term, before having to resign in shame? (I’m wondering if Eric Massa actually holds the record, but I’d bet there’s some historical example of someone accomplishing it in less than one year.) The reason I ask is that things seem to be moving into a new phase in the investigation into David Rivera, and whether piles of money paid from a dog track that he helped, to his mother’s marketing company, found their way into his pockets. The Miami-Dade County’s state’s attorney, Katherine Fernandez Rundle, just turned the case over to the Florida Dept. of Law Enforcement. Although that sounds ominous, some observers are seeing the move as a downgrade, though, as the FDLE may not devote the same level of resources to it; Rundle has been viewed as a possible Dem challenger in this district, and may be punting the case to avoid it becoming a liability for her later.

• MI-15: Rep. John Dingell (84 years old) says he’ll be back for an unprecedented 30th term in the House, running again in 2012. One important detail, though: whatever district he’s running in, it won’t be the 15th next time, as Michigan is about to lose a seat. Dingell has survived multiple bad redistrictings over the decades, including beating fellow Democratic Rep. Lynn Rivers in a 2002 primary mashup. (Thanks to Greg Giroux, we know now that Dingell will pass Robert Byrd in all-time legislative service in June of 2013.)

• Mayors: Two mayoral races are in the news today, although both aren’t up for grabs until 2012. Two-term incumbent Buddy Dyer (who used to be the Democratic leader in the Florida state Senate) says he’s going to run for another term as mayor of Orlando. He also mentioned some vague gubernatorial aspirations. Also, Portland, Oregon will elect a new mayor in ’12; all the action will be in the Democratic primary, where it’s not certain that Sam Adams (damaged by a sex scandal several years ago) will run for a second term. One interesting possibility mentioned: former Senate candidate Steve Novick, who gained a lot of netroots attention during his ’08 Dem primary run, is seriously considering a run.

• Votes: As you’re probably already aware, the Dems held the defections down to three on yesterday’s HCR repeal vote. It was the three likeliest suspects, given the combination of their dark-red districts and previous statements on the matter: OK-02’s Dan Boren, NC-07’s Mike McIntyre, and AR-04’s Mike Ross. UT-02’s Jim Matheson has the reddest district of any “no” vote, but he’s a member of leadership and may be sanguine about getting a better district out of redistricting next year (or just figuring that the worst is past).

• Redistricting: Arizona legislative Republicans sort of succeeded with their quest to get three members of the state redistricting panel kicked off (on the grounds that they were serving in other political offices); however, it was a partial success because only two of the three challenged members got kicked off by the state supreme court and the one they were really targeting the most didn’t get kicked off. Also, if you’re in Virginia and you’re a college student, the state is having a redistricting contest. No word on whether you absolutely have to be part of a team or can do it individually, but the winners get a cash prize and get to present the design for new congressional and legislative maps to the Governor’s entirely-nonbinding advisory panel. (Actually, it looks like it’s too late to start a team if your college doesn’t already have one, but your college probably already has a team which you might be able to join. See here for the details.)

• FL-Sen: With everyone fixated on the three retirements in the Senate in the last week (although the Fix makes the good point this morning that by this point in the 2010 cycle, there had already been four retirements), Bill Nelson seems compelled to point out that he won’t be one of them. In front of as many reporters as possible (at an AP gathering), he confirmed today that he’s running again.

• MO-Sen, MO-06: Wow, this is out of nowhere (although I’m not sure whether this is going to have any legs beyond today), but potentially very interesting: Republican Rep. Sam Graves is suddenly expressing some interest in the Senate race, calling it a “great opportunity.” He’s been in the House since 2000 and is chair of the Small Business Committee, so giving that up would be a big move. He may be seeing the diminished likelihood of a Jim Talent run and sensing there’s room for another establishmentarian-type candidate to go against the more tea-flavored Sarah Steelman. (This would open up MO-06 in the state’s rural northwest, which was Dem-held before Graves but has shifted to the right, currently R+7; Dems tried to make it competitive in 2008 and didn’t get any traction.)

• ND-Sen: Ready for a whole lot of names of people who might run for Senate? In fact, let me just blockquote the Bismarck Tribune, rather than transcribing it laboriously:

The list of Republicans whose names are being thrown out include Gov. Jack Dalrymple, Lt. Gov. Drew Wrigley, Rep. Rick Berg, Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem, Tax Commissioner Cory Fong, Public Service Commissioners [Brian] Kalk and Kevin Cramer, Sen. John Hoeven’s state director Shane Goettle, GOP state treasurer Bob Harms, and Great Plains Software developer Doug Burgum.

As for Democrats, names circulating include both [ex-state Sen. and radio host]Joel and [ex-AG] Heidi Heitkamp, former state Sen. Tracy Potter, USDA Rural Development Director Jasper Schneider, state Sen. Mac Schneider, U.S Attorney Tim Purdon, Conrad’s state director Scott Stofferahn and former Byron Dorgan staffer Pam Gulleson, former agriculture commissioner Sara Vogel, former state Rep. Chris Griffin, State Sen. Tim Mathern of Fargo, Senate Minority Leader Ryan Taylor and even Earl Pomeroy.

The Bismarck Tribune article also gets a number of these people on record, although their comments are all various degrees of noncommittal. Kent Conrad tipped his hand a bit yesterday, giving nods in the Grand Forks Herald to both Heitkamps, as well as to Schneider. One other Dem who got mentioned a lot yesterday, Roger Johnson (the president of the National Farmers Union) has already said he’s not interested. And in what’s not a surprise, the Tea Partiers aren’t happy with anyone of ’em (although some had some words of praise for Berg), but are still promising to “battle for control.”

• VT-Sen: It looks like Republican state Auditor Tom Salmon’s Facebook attacks on Bernie Sanders weren’t just the work of a bored guy at work but, as many speculated, part of a coordinated plan to move toward a run against Sanders; he’s now publicly saying that he he’s interested in the race. Color me puzzled: why would Salmon (who was a Democrat until a year and a half ago) go after an entrenched institution like Sanders in 2012 when he could run for Gov. against Peter Shumlin, who’s just getting situated and won by only a narrow margin in 2010?

• KY-Gov: This one gets filed straight to the Department of Foregone Conclusions, but it was made official today: Republican state Sen. president David Williams and Ag Comm. Richie Farmer filed their candidacy papers today, to go up against incumbent Dem Steve Beshear in November.

• WV-Gov: We’re getting some pushback/clarification from Shelley Moore Capito’s team regarding claims from gubernatorial candidate Betty Ireland that she wasn’t going to run for Governor; a spokesperson says the only thing that’s off the table is a run in the special election for Governor (which we know now will be held this November). She’s still open to a bid for either Governor or Senate in 2012. Dave Catanese also wonders whether Capito’s timeline is a little longer, i.e. a 2014 run against Jay Rockefeller (or for his open seat, if he retires, seeing as how he’ll be 77 then). It’s also looking like the candidates for November’s special election will be picked by primary rather than by the parties; acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, who was the main impediment to a 2011 election until yesterday’s supreme court ruling, says he’s working with SoS (and likely Dem primary opponent) Natalie Tennant to set special primaries in motion.

• NY-13: Ex-Rep. Mike McMahon seems to be laying groundwork for a rematch against Mike Grimm, who defeated him narrowly in 2010. He reached out to members of the Staten Island Democratic Association at a meeting last night.

• OR-01: Rep. David Wu has always struck people as a little odd (many of you probably remember his Klingons speech), but it seems like something has intensified lately, and it’s starting to come out in the open. It’s been revealed that in the last few months, he’s lost a number of his key staffers amidst complaints about his public behavior, including his chief of staff (who left to join a Rep. with less seniority) and his communications director (who left without having another job lined up, which is even more highly unusual, especially in this economic climate). This chief fundraiser and chief pollster also say they don’t plan to work with him any longer. This is a D+8 district with a robust Dem bench, which is good because this may be a difficult story for Wu to shake, especially given general rumblings of discontent with him that have been building over time.

• Mayors: Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter looks like he’s in good shape for his 2011 re-election, according to a new poll from Municipoll. Nutter’s at 47-39 against Generic D primary opponent, wins a three-way primary against Bill Green and Anthony Williams 46-21-18, and wins a three-way against Sam Katz and Williams 44-22-21. Interestingly (though consistent with the original coalition that elected him), Nutter has stronger support among whites (64% favorable) than he does among African-Americans, at 45%. (Nutter is black.) Nutter also just secured the support of the Laborers union. Even further down the weeds in Philly, Republican state Rep. (and, briefly, former speaker) Dennis O’Brien will run for a vacant city council seat in NE Philly. That’s good news, because it might free up his state House seat and make any Dem attempt to retake the state House in 2012 easier, seeing as how his seat is one of the most Dem-leaning seats held by a Republican.

• Minnesota: Two stories developing in Minnesota; one, the legal battle over 2012 redistricting has already begun, with Minnesota its first flashpoint. With the GOP controlling the legislature (but not the governorship), Dems have filed a suit seeking an injunction requiring legislators to submit proposed redistricting plans directly to the court (where they’ll probably wind up anyway, regardless of how this suit goes). Also, Minnesota GOP legislators are seeking to emulate their next-door neighbors in Wisconsin in making it more difficult to vote, seeking to push a voter ID bill.

• Redistricting: You may remember some Republican laments from a few days ago about the apparent failure of their MAPS program to raise the money needed to coordinate redistricting at a national level; those fears seem to be spreading, including to ex-Rep. Tom Reynolds, who’s spearheading the process for the GOP this year. Part of the problem seems to be that they spent so much money winning control of state legislatures in November that nothing was reserved for coordinating the subsequent redistricting. Nathan Gonzales also previews how state legislators from both parties are currently hunkering down in Washington learning (since many weren’t in office in 2000) the redistricting process from the ground up; in particular, they’re learning the new technologies (like GIS programs like Maptitude), which obviously have come a long way since the last round of redistricting.

• Census: Hats off to the Census Bureau, who, just in time to go with their upcoming onslaught of 2010 data, have launched a new and improved version of American FactFinder (the main research tool on their site), a significant improvement over the rather clumsy and unintuitive existing version. I wouldn’t go so far as to call the new version intuitive either, but it makes multi-variable searches and customized maps much easier.

• MA-Sen: No surprises are revealed in the Boston Globe’s post-Vicki-Kennedy-announcement state-of-the-Senate-field story (Mike Capuano, Stephen Lynch, Alan Khazei, and Robert Pozen are the Dems who get the ink). As far as Capuano goes, the story confirms that he’s taking a “hard look” at the race and will make a decision by late spring.

• MI-Sen: Here’s some actual confirmation of what everyone assumed a few days ago, that ex-AG Mike Cox’s joining a Detroit law firm meant he wouldn’t be running for Senate in 2012. Cox himself says he’s out of contention, and he talked up his former gubernatorial primary rival, ex-Rep. Peter Hoekstra for the job.

• ND-Sen: It’s been clear for a while now that Kent Conrad wasn’t going to be given a bye in his 2012 race, especially now that the GOP seems to be on an upswing in North Dakota. But now it’s looking clearer who the opponent will be: 44-year-old Public Service Commissioner Brian Kalk is forming an exploratory committee. (There are three PSC Commissioners, elected statewide to oversee stuff like utilities and grain elevators.)

• NV-Sen: John Ensign seems undaunted by recent polling showing him in deep doo-doo in both the GOP primary and general election for 2012, and says he’s pushing ahead on ahead with his re-election plans, although also admitting that it’s going to be “very, very difficult.” He’s putting together a campaign team and “jump starting” his financial operations (which, considering they’re actually in pieces all over his garage floor, may require a little more than just jump starting). This was revealed yesterday at a rather awkward conference for human resources execs where both Ensign and Dean Heller were speakers; Heller told reporters afterwards that he “would be lying to you if I said I wasn’t thinking about it” and “don’t mind giving voters a choice if it winds up being a head-to-head,” although he also had no timetable for an announcement.

• WV-Gov: Five different potential candidates appeared at a forum for the West Virginia gubernatorial race. Not all of them have announced, but this makes pretty clear who’s seriously in the hunt for this (despite the fact that nobody has any idea yet whether the race will be in Nov. 2011 or 2012). Among the Dems, SoS Natalie Tennant, state Treasurer John Perdue, and state Sen. Brooks McCabe were there; representing the GOP were ex-SoS Betty Ireland and state Sen. Clark Barnes. This still leaves out some of the likeliest other candidates, including Dem state House speaker Rick Thompson and acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin.

• FL-23: Rep. Alcee Hastings, unbeknownst to many, is getting pretty long in the tooth, at 74. He says he has no intention of slowing down, though (not that he needs to work fast, to hold down his safe blue district); he just announced plans to run not only in 2012 again, but in 2014 as well, so long as he’s healthy. The article cites state Sen. Chris Smith as a likely replacement once Hastings does retire. (Which means the House would get two Chris Smiths, to go with its two Mike Rogers.)

• MN-08: Here’s a minor bombshell for Minnesota Democrats, where outgoing House majority leader Tony Sertich had been widely expected to take on fluky new Rep. Chip Cravaack in 2012 in this D+3 district. Having just been appointed Iron Range Resources Commissioner, though, he now says that he won’t run. The Duluth-area portion of the district has a pretty thorough DFL bench, so they won’t lack for a credible challenger, but Sertich had been at the top of almost everyone’s list so this scrambles things a bit.

• Redistricting: One thing that the Republicans have always been good at is making sure that stuff that can pay dividends down the line is well-funded, but this seems like an unusual case of ball-dropping: Making America’s Promise Secure (or MAPS), a 501(c)(4) oriented toward paying for the legal aspects of the 2012 redistricting battle, never really got off the ground and has almost no money, leaving the state parties to fend for themselves. There are also a number of interesting pieces today on the upcoming battles in individual states, including The Fix’s look at the impact of the citizen redistricting panel on California (where the switch away from incumbent protection has a lot of old-timers of both parties shaking in their boots). There’s also another look at Massachusetts, and also a nice piece about New Mexico that has lots of detail about previous decades’ battles. New Mexico is a state we haven’t thought about much in this context because its House boundaries aren’t likely to change much, but state legislative seats are likely to shift significantly from the state’s stagnant east into Albuquerque’s suburbs.

• Voter suppression: Wisconsin’s newly-Republican-controlled legislature is already taking some pains to make sure that it stays that way, with one of their first legislative priorities imposing photo ID requirements for all voters at polling places (and to push for a constitutional amendment that would make that law more difficult to repeal later). They’d also like to move on ending Wisconsin’s well-known same-day-registration, although that may not be as likely a target seeing as how it’s not only popular but would also cost a lot of money (because federal law says that the state would then need to implement a motor-voter registration system instead).

• Congress: This may be the single most useful thing you’ll read today: the Hill’s guide to pronunciation of all of the names of the Congress members with hard-to-pronounce names. I learned that I’ve been mentally mispronouncing at least a dozen names; I’m sure everyone will find at least a few surprises.

• Meta: Curious how my own gifts for inspiring oratory would look in “word cloud” form, I ran SSP’s front page through Wordle.net, and the net result is, well, not very inspiring… it’s about as sober and nuts-and-bolts as it gets. None of our favorite neologisms made it on there (NWOTSOTB? Some Dude? Cat fud?)

• AK-Sen: With the book about to close on 2010, so too is the last outstanding race of 2010, the Alaska Senate race. Today the state is planning to certify Lisa Murkowski as winner of the race, including hand-delivering the certification papers to Washington DC so there won’t be any possible obstacles to Murkowski’s swearing-in next week (and ensuing temporary loss of state clout). This, of course, follows a legal one-two punch to Joe Miller’s hopes: last week’s loss at the Alaska Supreme Court, which upheld the trial court’s decision that the write-in votes for Murkowski were properly counted, and then this week’s ruling by a federal district court judge dismissing his related federal suit and lifting the hold on the race’s certification. Miller will not stand in the way of the certification, although he says he is still considering whether to continue litigating the matter (which, if he did, would feature the 9th Circuit as the next stop).

The most ironic part of the whole tale is that the Tea Party Express, in their ill-advised RINO hunt, seem to have only succeeded in making Murkowski into more of a free agent. If you’ve noticed that Murkowski seems to be toeing the GOP line less since winning the election without running under the GOP banner, you’re not alone: she was the only Senate GOPer to vote with the Dems on all four big action items during the lame duck session (the tax compromise, DADT repeal, START, and the DREAM Act).

• DE-Sen: SSP isn’t about re-litigating old elections, but this is indeed relevant because Christine O’Donnell, looking to capitalize on her newfound celebrity, may yet be a fourth-time candidate for the Senate against Tom Carper in the future. That fourth run might be more difficult, though, if she’s in prison… perhaps possible as it seems like the federal government has decided it’s had enough of her once-every-two-years grifting tours and is now criminally investigating her use of campaign funds for personal purposes during her 2010 campaign. Anyway, she put out a truly epic statement today on the matter that ought to have you reaching for your copy of the DSM, so laden with paranoia and delusions of grandeur it is.

• MA-Sen: While everyone seems to be wondering which U.S. Rep. will step into the gap if nobody named Kennedy runs for the Senate, there’s always the outside possibility that someone with a business background and lots of his own money tries to move to the head of the pack in the Bay State. Robert Pozen may fit that bill, and he’s apparently been talking to party insiders about the possibility. The investment banker-turned-Harvard Business professor has some liabilities, though: he served briefly in Mitt Romney’s cabinet, which may help his bipartisan bona fides but could be poison in a primary, and his personality has been described as [John] “Silberesque,” which would just be all-purpose poison.

• MI-Sen: If the NRSC ever had any interest in Tim Leuliette as their Senate candidate in Michigan, that probably evaporated this week. The auto-parts magnate just said that he’s not comfortable with self-funding his campaign and wouldn’t put much of his “large fortune” into a run. Considering that that was the main (if not only) selling point for a candidacy from an otherwise unknown political newcomer, that should pretty much be end-of-story.

• MO-Sen, MO-Gov: A poll from Republican pollster Wilson Research (commissioned by consulting firm Axiom Strategies) has (big surprise) good news for Republicans in it, most notably Jim Talent. The ex-Sen. has a significant lead in a rematch against Claire McCaskill, ahead 51-40. Talent seems to have a big electability edge over Sarah Steelman, who’s tied 44-44 with McCaskill. McCaskill’s approvals are 48/45. They also look at the Governor’s race, finding a more competitive race than PPP did but not the lead that a Peter Kinder internal showed. They find Dem incumbent Jay Nixon leading Kinder 45-42, with Nixon’s approvals at 52%. Worth noting: the poll’s a little stale, taken Dec. 1-2.

• ND-Sen: It’s starting to look like Kent Conrad will face some serious opposition from Republicans this cycle (assuming the 62-year-old runs for re-election), although it’s not clear exactly from whom. Perhaps the heaviest-hitter available, the state’s ex-Gov. and the former Bush administration Agriculture Secretary, Ed Schafer, has just ruled it out. For now, the likeliest-sounding one right now seems to be Brian Kalk, one of the state’s three Public Service Commissioners, a statewide elected position. Kalk says he’s giving it “serious thought,” which contrasts with oft-mentioned AG Wayne Stenehjem’s statement that he doesn’t have “any plans” (although not closing “any doors” either) and with newly-promoted Gov. Jack Dalrymple, for whom it’s the “last thing” on his mind.

• NE-Sen (pdf): In case you weren’t sure whether or not Ben Nelson’s in trouble for 2012, um, yes, he’s in trouble. Republican pollster Magellan is out with a poll finding Nelson with an overall 29/59 re-elect, and trailing GOP AG Jon Bruning 52-38. He’s also trailing state Treasurer Don Stenberg (not yet a candidate, but sounding likely to run as well) 46-40. Hopefully we’ll get a look from PPP at this one soon for confirmation. It seems like the Dems are already treating Bruning as a serious threat, though, with the state party trying to throw obstacles in his path by filing FEC and IRS complaints against Bruning over shoddy campaign-committee setup.

• VA-Sen: So apparently all you have to do is append “Tea Party Activist” to your job description, and all of a sudden you’re magically promoted from Some Dude to Very Serious Candidate Worthy of National Media Attention. Or at least that’s the case with the campaign announcement from Jamie Radtke, head of the Judean People’s Front People’s Front of Judea Virginia Federation of Tea Party Patriots, whose main claim to fame seems to be organizing a gathering of 3,000 ‘baggers in Richmond. At any rate, Radtke is the first actually announced GOP candidate. Meanwhile, Jim Webb seems to be moving closer to making a decision on whether to run for re-election (though no clues on how he feels), saying he’ll sort it out over the holiday break and make an announcement in the first quarter of 2011.

• IN-Gov: This comes as a surprise, since there had been a lot of buzz about her as the nominee, with increasing moves from Rep. Mike Pence toward a presidential run instead. But Becky Skillman, Indiana’s Lt. Governor, recently announced that she wouldn’t run for Governor in 2012, citing “minor health issues.” Does this make likelier a Pence gubernatorial run, now that he’d have an easy stroll to the nomination? And if Pence doesn’t run, that seems to point to a truly wide open field, as no one seems to have contemplated a GOP field that didn’t include Pence or Skillman. Who else might step up? (I hear Mike Sodrel may still be looking for a job…)

• NC-Gov: Rounding out the troika of Republican polls showing Dem incumbents in trouble is one from North Carolina from Civitas, who have coordinated with a variety of pollsters and this time went straight to the big daddy of GOP pollsters, POS. The poll finds GOP former Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory cruising in a rematch against Dem incumbent Bev Perdue, who never really seemed to gain her footing after a narrow 2008 win: he leads her 51-36 (with Perdue getting only 64% among Democrats).

• WA-Gov: Two interesting developments mean this race isn’t as open-and-shut as I’d thought. One is that there’s increasing buzz linking Dow Constantine, just elected in 2009 as King County Executive, to the governor’s race. I’ve regarded Constantine (who’s 47) as a very likely Governor starting in 2020, but with Dems seeming a little edgy that none of their biggest-name candidates (Rep. Jay Inslee, whose WA-01 is centered in suburban Snohomish Co., Snohomish Co. Exec Aaron Reardon, Spokane-based state Sen. majority leader Lisa Brown) are from their stronghold of King County while likely GOP candidate Rob McKenna is, there might be some pressure on Constantine to move up his timetable. (It’s worth noting that Gary Locke became Gov. in 1996 after three years as King Co. Executive.) The other develompent is that Chris Gregoire isn’t categorically ruling out an attempt at a third term, which she’s legally entitled to do but Just Isn’t Done. (Although she might point out that the last time it was tried, 1972, Dan Evans was successfully re-elected… in fact, the last time a Republican was re-elected Governor in Washington.) She registered as a 2012 candidate with the Public Disclosure Commission, in order to “keep her options open.” (UPDATE: Big h/t to meekermariner, who points out in comments that this Gregoire article is nearly two years old, leaving me to wonder why Politico was linking to it with such enthusiasm. At any rate, the Gregoire committee remains open today, although that in itself isn’t much of a suggestion that a third term may be in the offing.)

• WV-Gov: This week was the deadline for filing briefs for the lawsuit that’s attempting to move up the special election to replace Joe Manchin up to 2011. We still don’t have an answer to when it will happen, but at least we know who’s on what side in the case: the state’s major unions (including the AFL-CIO and WVEA) want it sooner, and so does likely candidate and Dem state House speaker Rick Thompson. State Auditor Glen Gainer supports the expedited election too, while SoS Natalie Tennant (another possible Dem candidate) has basically punted on the issue. And if you’re wondering about Joe Manchin’s decision to duck DADT and DREAM Act votes in order to enjoy family holiday festivities, it seems like it wasn’t, first and foremost, a self-protecting profile in cowardice. With Manchin having survived probably his toughest challenge, he’s more interested now in clearing the way for ally and acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, and not interested in provoking a social issues-based civil war within the state Dem party that could undermine Tomblin’s shot at getting elected to a full term.

• OH-01: Guess who’s sounding like he’s gearing up for a rematch? Steve Driehaus, in an interview with the Cincinnati paper, took a variety of potshots at Steve Chabot, calling him a Boehner “follower” and saying he shouldn’t “sit too easy.” Driehaus has previously said he’s “open” to another attempt. (This is Cincinnati-based district is notorious for steep dropoff in African-American voting in off-years, so if any time would be the right time for Driehaus to try again, 2012 would be it.)

• LA-St. House: There was a long period of threatening and flirting, but now it’s official: state Rep. Noble Ellington switched to the Republican Party, formally flipping control of the state’s lower legislative chamber to the GOP for the first time since Reconstruction. Functionally, it may not make much perceptible difference, since there was already a Republican speaker, and many Dems were already quite conservative.

• NY-St. Sen.: Looks like the end of the line in one other outstanding race (which ultimately had the balance of the New York state Senate in play): the state’s Court of Appeals said no thanks to incumbent Dem Craig Johnson’s appeal of a lower court decision that said there didn’t need to be a hand recount of machine votes in New York’s 7th District. GOPer Jack Martins had been declared the winner in the race by several hundred votes, handing the state Senate back to the GOP by a 32-30 margin.

• PA-St. Sen.: Pennsylvania’s state Senate has been even more stubbornly Republican over the years than New York’s, and it looks like the Dems are going to have play a bit more defense there in an upcoming special election. Democratic minority whip Michael O’Pake (the state’s longest-serving legislator) died several days ago at age 70, leaving a vacancy in SD-11 that will need to be filled by special election at some point between March and May (date TBD). On paper, this looks like the kind of district that would be a major test case for whether the Dems are going to continue their run of bad luck in the Keystone State from the 2010 election: while it works out to about D+4 (going 59/40 for Barack Obama and 51/48 for John Kerry), it also gave 55% of the vote to Tom Corbett and 50.6% to Pat Toomey this year. However, this may all boil down to bench strength in a traditionally-Dem district (centered on the blue-collar city of Reading, although made purple by inclusion of its suburbs, too): insiders from both parties are treating Democratic former Berks Co. Commissioner Judy Schwank as “prohibitive favorite.”

• Approvals: PPP does us the favor of consolidating all their year-end Senate approval ratings and gubernatorial approvals in one (or two, really) places. In the Senate, the most popular Senator overall, in addition to most popular one up in 2012, is Amy Klobuchar (59/29); while outgoing Roland Burris is the overall goat, Joe Lieberman is in worst shape of anyone up in 2012 (33/54). Among the few governors facing 2012 re-election, Jack Markell is tops at 50/32 (with Jay Nixon not far behind at 44/30), while Chris Gregoire fares the worst, in case she actually runs (although this might dissuade her sudden interest in a third term); her 40/53 is actually a worse spread than Bev Perdue’s 35/44.

• Redistricting: The Fix has a good piece on redistricting out, that should pretty much serve as the last word on why GOP purely-redistricting-related House seat gains are likely to be limited to the single digits for 2012: thanks to their 2010 overperformance, they’re thoroughly maxed out in the big four prizes where they have total control (Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania). That’s compounded by, in Florida, the new Fair Districts initiative, and in Texas, the need to create at least two more VRA districts while still protecting Blake Farenthold. Also, here’s one other redistricting implication that’s gotten totally overlooked in all the last few weeks’ discussion: although California didn’t lose or gain a seat, there’s been enough population shift within the state (thanks to stagnation in the Bay Area and rapid growth in the Inland Empire) that the net result will be the moving of most of one district from NoCal to SoCal. It’ll be interesting to see whether the new independent commission is able to do that in a way that lightly shifts boundaries southwards and protects the jobs of all 53 incumbents, or if someone from the north actually gets turfed out and an effectively new seat opens up in the south.

• Chicago mayor: A lot has happened in the Chicago mayoral race since we last checked: first, Rahm Emanuel cleared the first hurdle in ascertaining that he is, indeed, a Chicago resident and not a Kenyan (although there will be inevitable courtroom appeals for weeks to come, with opponents willing to go to the state Supreme Court). The Chicago Board of Election Commissioners last week rejected claims that Emanuel had abandoned his Chicago residency when he went to work in the White House. Also, we’ve seen two of Emanuel’s erstwhile opponents drop out of the race, narrowing the number of African-American candidates but still leaving that part of the field split between Danny Davis (last seen publicly urging Bill Clinton against coming to Chicago to campaign for Emanuel) and Carol Mosely Braun. State Sen. James Meeks dropped out, saying he didn’t want to further split the black vote, and Roland Burris also withdrew, via press release, from the race (although it’s unclear whether he ever really was in the race, since he never made any public appearances). Finally, we got another poll of the race from We Ask America, which may be most noteworthy for showing Gerry Chico in position to make the runoff. They find Emanuel at 44, Chico at 12, Braun at 8, Davis at 7, Miguel Del Valle at 6, and Meeks at 4.

• AK-Sen: You might recall that yesterday the state of Alaska asked to intervene in Joe Miller’s state-court case disputing the Senatorial election, demanding an expedited result. Now the judge is allowing Lisa Murkowski herself to intervene in the case as well; she says the state wouldn’t adequately represent her interests, and she’s still trying to get an additional 2,000 ballots out there (that weren’t counted for her) counted for her as icing on the cake.

• FL-Sen: He isn’t even in the House yet, but there’s growing buzz for Daniel Webster for the 2012 Senate race, as a possible opponent to Bill Nelson. Of course, as far as I can tell from today’s article, that buzz seems to be coming from Webster’s own coterie, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard his name associated with the race. (Reading between the lines, it looks like Rep. Vern Buchanan — whose myriad lawsuits regarding campaign finance chicanery and his car dealership seem to have faded into the background — is another name to keep an eye on here.)

• MO-Sen: Sarah Steelman already has one key backer, in the event the quest for the GOP nomination in Missouri turns into a heated primary. The Club for Growth is already lining up behind Steelman, not formally endorsing but sending around a press release touting her and also taking some swipes at Jim Talent for his earmark-lovin’ ways.

• NM-Sen: More Some Dude news in New Mexico, where another random guy who lost a NM-02 primary is getting in the GOP Senate field: Greg Sowards (who lost the 2008 primary to succeed Steve Pearce). Further up the food chain, ex-Rep. Heather Wilson seems to be on GOPers’ wish list, but she says she isn’t focused on that. (I can’t see her running unless Jeff Bingaman decides to retire, and since he has fundraisers planned in coming months, he doesn’t seem to be acting like a retiree.)

• NV-Sen: The big news yesterday was that John Ensign is no longer considered a target for investigation by the DOJ, in connection to that whole ooops-sorry-I-boned-your-wife-here-have-a-lobbying-job thing. He still faces internal Senate Ethics grilling, which could lead to discipline or even expulsion. How are we supposed to feel about this? A bad day for objective justice, perhaps… but probably a net plus for the Democrats, seeing as how this makes it likelier that Ensign runs again and survives a GOP primary (which a recent PPP poll, before this news, already showed him in position to do so) and enters the general election in weakened form. The local GOP seems to be reading this the same way, still feeling very leery about an Ensign run and very much preferring to see Rep. Dean Heller as their 2012 candidate.

• VA-Sen: With Prince William Supervisor Corey Stewart already firing some potshots across George Allen’s bow in advance of 2012’s GOP Senate primary, now it seems like Allen’s camp is returning fire with some heavier-gauge guns. Stewart has to run for re-election to his current job in 2011, and Allen’s camp is supposedly vowing to encourage backers to pour in financial support to Stewart’s opposition in that race (whoever that might be), in order to decapitate a Stewart run before it can materialize.

• MN-Gov: This is taking damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t to a new level: Tom Emmer’s team’s wave of frivolous (and when I say frivolous, I’m not being hyperbolic, as you can see here) ballot challenges in the Minnesota recount has mounted so high that officials have had to add more counting tables… and now Emmer is threatening to sue over the fact that they’ve added more counting tables, saying that that somehow indicates bias against Emmer. The SoS says that adding more tables can’t possibly violate any rules. At any rate, moving on to Day 4 of counting, the official tally now finds that the numbers have still barely budged: Mark Dayton has gained 17 votes since Election Day while Emmer has gained 14, with 84% of the vote recounted, meaning there’s really no path to victory here for Emmer.

• VT-Gov: We mentioned yesterday that Peter Shumlin brought his GOP opponent, Brian Dubie, into his inner circle, and now he’s doing the Team of Rivals thing with his closest competitor from the Dem primary. Ex-Lt. Gov. Doug Racine, who Shumlin beat by 100-or-so votes, is being brought on board as Shumlin’s head of the Agency of Human Services, where his key task will be starting up the state’s planned single-payer health care system.

• WV-Gov: Democratic SoS Natalie Tennant is making even more candidate-ish noises, saying she’s “strongly considering” a gubernatorial run, especially if it occurs in 2011, which would mean not having to give up her current job. Not only are acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin and state House speaker Richard Thompson expected to run for the Dems, but state Sen. Jeff Kessler and state Treasurer John Perdue are also interested.

• MA-01, MA-02: The news from the Bay State is that veteran Democratic Reps. John Olver and Richard Neal are both publicly saying that they’re running for re-election. In any other year, that would be purely yawn-inducing, but this year, that’s fascinating, as it potentially sets them up on a collision course. My expectation was the Massachusetts redistricting conundrum would probably be solved by a retirement from the 74-year-old Olver, and parceling out pieces of the 1st into Neal’s 2nd and Jim McGovern’s 3rd. With Olver and Neal both sticking around, the subtraction is likelier come from the Boston area, where it seems likely that at least one Rep. will vacate in order to take on Scott Brown in 2012 (which would make sense since not only is Mike Capuano sounding the likeliest, but his Cambridge-based 8th is the state’s most depopulated district)… but if none of them take the plunge, the lost seat may come the state’s west. Complicating matters even further is that Pittsfield-based ex-state Sen. Andrea Nuciforo has already announced that he’s running in the MA-01 primary in 2012, Olver or not. (Would she he run in a primary against both Amherst-based Olver and Springfield-based Neal if they all get smooshed together?)

• NY-01: As we mentioned yesterday, Tim Bishop’s team is urging Randy Altschuler to “give in to the math.” Yesterday’s gain from the first day of counting challenged ballots was a net gain of 27 more for Bishop.  

• Redistricting: Here’s one more comprehensive redistricting resource to add to your pile, if you haven’t already seen it. The Brennan Center’s guide includes a rundown on who controls what and what procedures are used state-to-state.

• New York: This is a staggeringly large number, that somehow seems disproportionate to the rather blasé NYT headline: “New York City Board of Elections Finds 200,000 Votes a Month After Election.” It’s a mishmash of affidavit, absentee, and military ballots that apparently were just now added to the totals. 80,000 of those ballots were from Queens alone, which is 31% more than that borough reported on Election Day. While there were some close races in Queens, the city says that this wasn’t enough to reverse the results in any election (and the one race that could have been worrisome, SD-11, actually saw a gain for Tony Avella, who beat GOP incumbent Frank Padavan, from 53-47 to 54.3-45.7).

• AK-Sen: When Norm Coleman… the man who has pretty much set all current standards for pointlessly dragging out an election for partisan purposes… is telling you to pack it in, believe me, it’s time to pack it in. The ex-Sen. from Minnesota is the latest GOPer to tell Joe Miller to stop the madness. (What’s his angle? He may have designs on behind-the-scenes Beltway leadership, possibly RNC chair, and with that in mind would probably like to discourage nonsensical R-on-R courtroom violence.)

• IL-Sen: The 59-41 Dem edge in the Senate drops to 58-42 for the rest of the lame duck session today, as Rep. Mark Kirk gets sworn in as the newest member. (Illinois, of course, was the only of the special election seats that flipped to the GOP.)

• IN-Sen: This NYT story doesn’t really have any new specifics about Richard Lugar’s upcoming teabagging that you don’t already know, but it has a spectacular quote from former Missouri Sen. John Danforth, another Republican who occupied the same pretty-conservative-but-not-a-jerk-about-it space as Lugar:

If Dick Lugar… having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.

• MA-Sen: The Boston Globe takes a look back at Deval Patrick’s reelection town-by-town, and also wonders what it may mean for Scott Brown’s first re-election battle in 2012. Patrick, for instance, won back many of the larger blue-collar (and usually Democratic) communities like Lowell and Quincy that Brown won. The question for 2012, though, is: how much of Brown’s initial success was unique to Brown (more charismatic than your garden-variety blue-blood Republican like Charlie Baker), and, by contrast, how much of that was unique to the turnout model produced by the special election?

• MD-Sen: Republicans may already be settling on a favorite for the Maryland Senate race in 2012, and they’re considering the same strategy as 2006, running an African-American against Ben Cardin. (In ’06, recall, Michael Steele, well, still lost badly, but made the race more competitive than Maryland is used to.) There’s a lot of buzz surrounding Charles Lollar, who just ran against Steny Hoyer in MD-05 and apparently wowed a lot of people on the stump. Of course, he also lost 64-35, but, well, you’ve gotta start somewhere. (Eric Wargotz, who just lost to Barb Mikulski, is also reportedly interested in trying again.)

• MO-Sen: The Beltway seems abuzz about a potential Claire McCaskill/Jim Talent rematch (thanks to McCaskill tweeting about her random airport meet-up with Talent, no doubt), but the missing part of the story seems to be that Talent, if he runs, could be walking right into a juicy establishment/tea party battle. Ex-Treasurer Sarah Steelman, who lost a feisty gubernatorial primary in 2008 and threatened a 2010 primary run against Roy Blunt, has been turning up the volume on a potential run too. Ed Martin, last seen losing narrowly in MO-03, has also become the subject of some speculation. One unlikely run at this point, though, is former Ambassador to Luxembourg (which is code for “very wealthy donor”) Ann Wagner, who has been linked to the Senate race but just announced a bid for RNC chair instead this morning.

• NJ-Sen: When did Bob Menendez’s numbers start to look like Richard Burr’s? A poll from Fairleigh Dickinson (favorables only, no head-to-heads) finds vast indifference about the Garden State’s junior Senator. At least he’s above water, with 31/25 faves, but 29% are unsure and 15% have never heard of him.

• NM-Sen: Jeff Bingaman, assuming he runs again, is already facing his first GOP opponent, although one from the Some Dude end of the spectrum. William English ran (apparently in the GOP primary) for the open NM-02 seat in 2002, although he seems best known for saying controversial things in his local newspaper, perhaps most notably that Barack Obama “literally amounts to an African dictator.”

• TX-Sen: Yet more names are surfacing on the GOP side for possible primary challenges to Kay Bailey Hutchison: today, it’s Houston-area state Sen. Dan Patrick.

• VA-Sen: Corey Stewart is the Prince William County Supervisor and a likely candidate in the GOP Senate primary, if his latest pronouncements are any indication. He’s started firing shots across the bow of presumptive favorite George Allen’s comeback, saying he had a “mediocre” Senate record and that his base has moved on.

• MN-Gov: The recount of the 2.1 million ballots in the Minnesota gubernatorial race officially kicks off today. You probably already know the candidates, but the Star-Tribune today profiles the really key players at this juncture: the lawyers. One of them, interestingly, is Eric Magnuson, who you may remember from the 2008-09 recount as state supreme court chief justice and head of the canvassing board; having left the court, now he’s on Tom Emmer’s team.

• WV-Gov: It’s still not clear when the election will even occur (to set a permanent replacement for Joe Manchin), but acting Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin isn’t going to get a free pass in the Dem primary, facing likely opposition from two of the people most actively involved in establishing when that election will happen. Both SoS Natalie Tennant and state House speaker Rick Thompson are eyeing the race, with Thompson “planning” to run and Tennant “seriously considering.”

• CA-20: Look for a likely rematch in the 20th, which turned into one of the nation’s closest races this year. Andy Vidak “promises” he’ll try again vs. Jim Costa in 2012, although if he couldn’t make it this year, the odds of him getting over the hump in a presidential year model seem even slimmer. (Unless, of course, the boundaries of the 20th get changed by the citizens’ commission, but the VRA is likely to keep compelling a Hispanic-majority Fresno-to-Bakersfield district.)

• CA-45: Further south, Palm Springs mayor Steve Pougnet is another potential rematch. The Democrat already filed for a 2012 campaign, although he says he hasn’t ruled another race in or out and is establishing the committee to settle up some unpaid bills from his 2010 race.

• CT-05: And here’s one more: Justin Bernier, who was initially the GOP’s preferred candidate in the primary in the 5th but got shoved over after Sam Caligiuri dropped down from the Senate race, is saying he’s considering another run in 2012 (motivated in part by the likelihood of an open seat with Chris Murphy’s likely Senate run).

• PA-11: Don’t assume that Corey O’Brien is going to be the Dem nominee in the effort to take back the 11th in 2012, as there’s a long list of possible contenders on the bench in this bluish seat. At the top is Scranton mayor (and, briefly, gubernatorial candidate) Chris Doherty, but other names you might see are Wilkes-Barre mayor Tom Leighton, former Pittston mayor (and Paul Kanjorski crony) Michael Lombardo, state Rep. Eddie Day Pashinski, Wilkes-Barre solicitor William Vinsko, and new state Sen. John Yudichak.

• California: Finally, those of you not living on the West Coast may be unaware that there are parts of the country where the Republicans are the ones in “what did we do wrong?” soul-searching mode. The WaPo looks at the epicenter of that, in California (where they didn’t pick up any House seats, lost all the statewide races, and even lost ground in the state legislature), where local GOPers are flummoxed by the state’s changing demographics.

(General h/t to Brian Valco, bearer of many of today’s links.)

• FL-Sen: Charlie Crist has to be feeling good about having limited this damage: few major Republican donors have switched over from Crist to Marco Rubio, after his switch to an independent campaign. Only five of Crist’s donors who gave more than $200 pre-switch have given similar amounts to Rubio since then, totalling only $6,340.

• LA-Sen: Clarus Research, on behalf of local TV station WWL, finds a somewhat closer Senate race in Louisiana than other pollster have; they see David Vitter leading Charlie Melancon 48-36 (with Vitter sporting a 51/37 approval). Vitter’s also in solid shape in his primary (suggesting that Chet Traylor internal was pretty thoroughly ginned-up with “informed ballot” questions); Vitter leads Traylor 74-5, with 3 for Nick Accardo.

• MO-Sen: The Missouri Senate race, not the recipient of much national attention until just recently, is now at the epicenter of ad spending. The DSCC is plowing $4 million into ads here (along with $1.3 million in KY-Sen), while Karl Rove-linked American Crossroads is also launching a new ad in Missouri, as well as one in NV-Sen. The combined buy is for $2 million (no word on how it breaks down between the states); maybe not coincidentally, Crossroads raised $2 million in July, almost all of which came from exactly two donors (prominent conservative donors Harold Simmons and Jerry Perenchio).

• WA-Sen: Maybe that usual calculus of adding Dino Rossi and Clint Didier votes in the primary to see if they add up to the Patty Murray votes shouldn’t apply… Didier just held a press conference today to announce that he’s not endorsing Rossi (at least not yet). He said he’d back Rossi if he promised to pledge to support no new taxes, sponsor an anti-abortion bill, and… get this… never vote for anything that would “increase the federal budget.” We’ll have to see if Rossi even bothers dignifying that with a response.

• WV-Sen, WV-Gov: A new “MindField Poll” (yes, that’s what they call it) by local pollster R.L. Repass finds an unsurprisingly large lead for Gov. Joe Manchin in the Senate special election; he leads GOPer John Raese 54-32, and is sitting on a 65% approval. They also look at the gubernatorial election in 2012 in the post-Manchin world, and find GOP Rep. Shelly Capito in the best shape. She beats all Democrats mentioned: Senate President (and Governor, if Manchin quits) Earl Ray Tomblin (43-29), state House Speaker Rick Thompson (44-29), Treasurer John Perdue (44-32), and SoS Natalie Tennant (40-37). Former Republican SoS Betty Ireland was also polled, but loses to all the Democrats (by margins as large as 44-24 to Tennant).

• CO-Gov: On what seems like a quest to be the first ever major party candidate to get 0% in a gubernatorial race, Dan Maes is busy pissing off his one remaining clutch of supporters, the teabaggers, with his choice of the somewhat centrist Tambor Williams as his running mate. She was a supporter of anti-TABOR Referenda C and D, but more aggravating to Maes backers is that although she says she’s anti-abortion, she’s taken some notably pro-choice votes in the leigslature. Maes hasn’t lost any major endorsers over it, but is running damage control on the right.

• IL-Gov: It seems like Pat Quinn may be racing Maes to the bottom, in terms of campaign woes. He and his media team — David Axelrod’s former firm, AKPD — parted ways, seemingly at Quinn’s decision. AKPD doesn’t seem to sad to be heading out the door; their terse statement about the parting of ways was, “We and the Quinn campaign agreed that our divergent approaches to disciplined, professional communications are incompatible. We wish Pat well.”

• FL-08: Daniel Webster is getting some last minute help on the stump in the closing days of the Florida primary campaign. Mike Huckabee (who endorsed Webster a long whiel ago) will appear with him this weekend.

• FL-22: Here’s a hilarious little piece on Allen West’s attempts to surround and conquer his district, rather than actually do anything in it: he just opened his new campaign office in West Palm Beach… in FL-23. He recently also held a town hall in FL-19, and perhaps most significantly, lives in Plantation, in FL-20. (It is worth noting the 22nd is one convoluted-looking district.)

• Mayors: That vaunted “anti-incumbent” year hasn’t panned out much in the primaries, but there is one other race coming up soon that looks like it’s on track for a loss by an incumbent. A new Clarus poll of the Washington, DC mayoral race finds Vincent Gray leading incumbent mayor Adrian Fenty, 39-36, in the Democratic primary.

• Rasmussen:

• AL-Gov: Ron Sparks (D) 34%, Robert Bentley (R) 58%

• AR-Sen: Blanche Lincoln (D-inc) 27%, John Boozman (R) 65%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 38%, John Robitaille (R) 20%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 32%

• RI-Gov: Frank Caprio (D) 40%, Victor Moffitt (R) 17%, Lincoln Chafee (I) 33%

• WY-Gov: Leslie Petersen (D) 24%, Matt Mead (R) 58%

• Election results: Last night’s Georgia primary election went pretty much as expected. The main surprise was the collapse of John Oxendine in the GOP gubernatorial primary, who had the most money and led most polls, but his collapse was plainly foreseeable via polls over the last few weeks. He finished fourth, behind Karen Handel and Nathan Deal (who’ll advance to the runoff, where the Palin-backed Handel will attack Deal for being corrupt and the Gingrich-backed Deal will attack Handel for being a RINO), and Eric Johnson. Ex-Gov. Roy Barnes locked down the Democratic nomination without a runoff. Labor Comm. Michael Thurmond easily advanced to face GOP incumbent Johnny Isakson in the Senate race.

In the House races, Dems in two of the three potentially competitive races in Georgia know who their opponents will be: Mike Keown in GA-02 and Austin Scott in GA-08 won without runoffs. John Barrow — who beat back a challenge from the left from Regina Thomas in GA-12 (with a final score of 58-42, as Thomas’s Savannah stronghold reported late) — will need to wait for a runoff between Ray McKinney and Carl Smith. Hank Johnson in GA-04 escaped his three-way primary against Vernon Jones and Connie Stokes without a runoff, too. Finally, two dark-red seats will feature GOP runoffs: GA-09’s newly-elected Rep. Tom Graves will face off yet again against Lee Hawkins, who lost the special election, while the GA-07 race features a runoff between Rob Woodall and Jody Hice.

• AR-Sen, AR-Gov: That internal poll from Blanche Lincoln didn’t seem to do anything to stem the gusher of bad polls. One additional poll came out yesterday, from Ipsos on behalf of Reuters. It finds John Boozman leading Lincoln 54-35. On the plus side, it also looks at the Governor’s race and finds that the Zata|3 poll finding only a 9-point lead for incumbent Dem Mike Beebe may have been a bit pessimistic. They find Beebe leading Republican challenger Jim Keet 57-35, more consistent with other polling.

• IN-Sen: Brad Ellsworth is out with a new introductory TV ad in the Indiana Senate race. It focuses on his blue collar roots and his experience as Sheriff; there’s nary a mention of his time in Congress.

• LA-Sen: It turns out David Vitter may actually be a better family-values role model than his newly minted GOP primary opponent. Faulkner character State Rep. Noble Ellington says that Chet Traylor was “significantly involved” in his divorce from his ex-wife Peggy McDowell, who then married Traylor. Traylor is currently romantically involved with the estranged wife of one of his stepsons via McDowell. The two stepsons have also filed a lawsuit against Traylor, accusing him of hiding information about his financial assets, as part of their probate case concerning McDowell’s recent death without a will. (If someone wants to call me classist in the comments, please feel free, but I can’t help but notice that Traylor’s name is a homonym for a certain type of dwelling whose residents are stereotypically and often unfairly associated with such behavior.)

• WV-Sen, WV-Gov: As expected (at least as expected since late last night), Shelly Moore Capito announced this morning that she won’t run in the Senate special election in November, despite the nice Capito Carveout specifically designed by the legislature to facilitate her doing so. This leaves self-funding businessman John Raese the likely candidate. (In fact, he’d sounded likely to run in the primary with or without Capito, which may have been a major deterrent for Capito. She cited not wanting to run for two things at once, though, and the potential legal challenges to her doing so.) The primary is Aug. 28, so someone will need to fill the gap soon. West Virigina political analyst Hoppy Kercheval seemed to be the first to correctly diagnose the situation earlier yesterday, pointing out her risk-averse past.

There was one surprise, today, though: Joe Manchin drew a primary opponent, theoretically from the left. He was recently in the news for his staunch opposition to Mike Oliverio in WV-01; it’s former SoS and former Rep. Ken Hechler. Hechler, by the way, is 95 years old, older even than Robert Byrd was, so, well, take that for what it’s worth. Most of the speculation today instead seems to involve what happens with the Governorship. Succession laws aren’t very clear (and there’s no Lt. Gov.), but apparently State Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin will be acting Governor in the event of a Manchin move to the Senate. The bigger question is when the election to fill that job would occur: in a 2011 special election, or in 2012 when Manchin’s term would end anyway? Any discussion of GOP candidates for that begins and ends with Capito, but the Dem list is endless, ranging from temp Sen. Carte Goodwin to SoS Natalie Tennant, but almost certain to include state Treasurer John Perdue and state Sens. Jeff Kessler and Brooks McCabe.

• AL-Gov: Following the lead of Artur Davis on the Democratic side, Bradley Byrne finally got around to endorsing Robert Bentley, sticking his knife in his back a few more times along the way for good measure. His parting shot was that Bentley still needs to answer questions about his relationship with the teachers’ union, the Alabama Education Association.

• CO-Gov: OK, so it’s looking like if Scott McInnis does get kicked to the curb, no one is going to rally behind Dan Maes. His vaunted financial small-business acumen turned out to be a lot of inflated boasting, as newly-released tax returns reveal that his credit reporting business turns out to be a small operation and one that paid him earnings that put his family below the poverty line in 2005 and 2008. When asked how he made ends meet, he responded, “there are other ways to pay yourself than salary,” without further elaboration. Well, that’s true… are those ways legal, though?

• HI-Gov: After padding things out as long as he could, Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann finally resigned his day job today and launched his gubernatorial campaign in earnest. Hawaii has a “resign to run” law, so Hannemann wasn’t officially running until now, despite having been transparently campaigning for many months in the Dem primary against Neil Abercrombie.

• MA-Gov: Massachusetts Citizens for Life endorsed ex-Dem indie candidate Tim Cahill, rather than Republican Charlie Baker. Baker, from the moderate blue-blood side of the party, is pro-choice.

• NV-Gov (pdf): PPP’s Tom Jensen finds it ironic that somehow the Nevada GOP managed to pick the strongest possible Republican for the gubernatorial race and the weakest possible one for the Senate race. The telegenic and inoffensive Brian Sandoval is somehow managing to avoid having his GOP predecessor Jim Gibbons’ unpopularity (25/63) rub off on him (Sandoval is at 42/31). Sandoval leads Rory Reid (who’s at 34/48) by 52-38 in the general election.

• RI-Gov: Bill Clinton will be appearing in Rhode Island on behalf of Democratic candidate Frank Caprio, last man standing in the Dem primary, on July 29. Caprio backed Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary.

• WI-Gov: Fundraising numbers in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race are out. Democrat Tom Barrett raised $2.39 million in the period of January through June, while GOPers Scott Walker and Mark Neumann raised $2.59 million and $1.96 million respectively (although some of Neumann’s money seems to be out of his own pocket). In terms of CoH, it’s Barrett (with no primary opposition) with $2.89 million, Walker with $2.57 million, and Neumann with $1.05 million.

• IA-02: Marianette Miller-Meeks, the ophthalmologist who lost severely to David Loebsack in 2008, is back for a rematch, and seems to be in better shape this time (better, even, than Raul Labrador), if her own internal is to be believed. Her poll from Susquehanna Polling & Research gives Loebsack a 46-41 lead.

• NJ-03: The Courier-Post wonders aloud “who the heck is Peter DeStefano?” That’s because no one really seems to know. He’s the independent Tea Party candidate in the 3rd, who hasn’t done anything to promote himself and whose main claim to fame was polling in the double-digits in John Adler’s recent internal poll where he was dominating Jon Runyan. This led, naturally, to GOP claims that DeStefano was some sort of plant from the Adler camp. DeStefano denies that, but isn’t helping matters with his pattern of ducking publicity, not just among the teabagging rank and file but even with the Courier-Post too.

• PA-11: Naturally, it’s never a sign of strength for an incumbent to go negative on his challenger this early… but it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that Paul Kanjorski is in a heap of trouble in his rematch against Lou Barletta. But Kanjorski may feel he’s not only better served by localizing, not nationalizing his race, but also that he has a target-rich environment for hits on Barletta, given Barletta’s tenure as mayor of city of Hazleton, which has the highest unemployment in the state and whose local government is in danger of going into receivership.

• TX-06: I suppose this is an example of karma at work. Rep. Joe Barton’s campaign fund took a loss of $154K over the last three months because of hits to its investments… perhaps most significantly, because of losses at BP.

• RNC: It seems like Michael Steele can say all the dumb things he wants and keep his job (fo shizzle), but could financial mismanagement be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? The RNC has had to report new debts that were kept off the books by staffers loyal to Steele, and treasurer Randy Pullen (not a Steele ally) is going public alleging that the debts go much deeper than what was reported to the FEC, claiming that more than another $7 million in debt is out there. The dispute is likely to dominate matters at the RNC’s annual meeting in two weeks. This also leads to speculation that American Crossroads, the Karl Rove 527 operation that finally seemed to kick into high gear last month, will be the de facto main source for independent expenditures this year while the RNC sputters.

• House: Well, it looks like we’re stuck with 435 for the foreseeable future. A federal district court ruled against the plaintiffs in a lawsuit that claimed that only 435 seats was unconstitutional under 14th Amendment grounds, because of malapportionment between different states (i.e. Montana and Wyoming each getting one Rep., despite their population differences).

• Rasmussen:

• KY-Sen: Jack Conway (D) 41%, Rand Paul (R) 49%

• MN-Gov: Mark Dayton (D) 40%, Tom Emmer (R) 36%

• MN-Gov: Margaret Anderson Kelliher (D) 40%, Tom Emmer (R) 35%

• MN-Gov: Matt Entenza (D) 37%, Tom Emmer (R) 36%

• OH-Gov: Ted Strickland (D-inc): 43%, John Kasich (R) 48%

• CO-Sen: Republican candidate Ken Buck has a couple pieces of good news today: one, he’s the recipient of $172K in independent expenditures from mysterious conservative group Americans for Job Security. And two, Jim DeMint‘s coming to town on July 8 to stump on Buck’s behalf

• NE-Sen: Ironically, on the same day that he was the deciding vote in the Senate’s failure to extend unemployment benefits, Ben Nelson announced that he won’t be making an appearance in the unemployment lines himself in 2012. He confirmed that he plans to run for re-election.

• SC-Sen: The profile of Lindsey Graham in the New York Times magazine is well worth a read. While it serves to make me like him a little more, I’ve gotta wonder if he’s even going to bother running (or at least running as a Republican) when he’s up again in 2014, considering it’s just going to tick off the teabaggers even more. He derides the Tea Partiers, saying they’ll be gone in a few years, “chortling” that Ronald Reagan would have a hard time getting elected as a Republican today… and also has a good laugh at the rumors about his sexual orientation, instead of, y’know, punching the interviewer in the nose or something unequivocally manly like that.

• WI-Sen, WI-Gov: PPP rolls out a last batch of numbers from their Wisconsin sample, looking at the Republican primaries in the Senate and gubernatorial races and seeing them as foregone conclusions. On the governor’s side, Milwaukee Co. Executive (and legendary 60’s crooner) Scott Walker leads ex-Rep. Mark Neumann 58-19, while in the Senate race, Ron Johnson leads Dave Westlake 49-11.

• WV-Sen: OK, so the rumor today is that things are still on for a 2012 special election to replace Robert Byrd, not a 2010 one as suggested yesterday. Gov. Joe Manchin and Senate President Earl Ray Tomblin are sending signals that they won’t call for a legislative special session to shift the election date to this year, despite the decision by SoS Natalie Tennant to have it in 2012.

• AL-Gov: Here’s one more politican trapped in the semantic quicksand that seems to be developing around the issue of stateside service during Vietnam. Alabama GOP runoff contestant Robert Bentley has drawn some heat for the words “Hospital commander” and “Vietnam War” appearing on-screen in one of his TV ads. Bentley was ranking medical doctor at Pope AFB (in North Carolina) during the Vietnam era, although he didn’t serve physically in Vietnam.

• FL-Gov: Now the supposed hero of 9/11 has RINO cooties, too? Rick Scott’s camp sent out press releases yesterday attacking opponent Bill McCollum for having supported “pro-abortion, pro-homosexual” Giuliani for President, back in those heady days of, say, 2007, when it was assumed that Giuliani was going to steamroller everyone else in the Florida primary.

• MD-Gov: Republican ex-Gov. Bob Ehrlich picked a running mate for his 2010 campaign, and, no, he’s not giving Michael Steele his old job back. He picked Mary Kane, who was the SoS under Ehrlich (an appointed position in Maryland). She’s from Montgomery County, suggesting he sees the route to 50%+1 through this increasingly-blue suburb.

• OR-Gov (pdf): Republican pollster Magellan is quickly becoming one of the most prolific purveyors of public polls, this time with a look at the gubernatorial race in Oregon. They join the consensus that this is a deadlocked race right now; they find Republican Chris Dudley leading Democrat John Kitzhaber by a paper-thin 41-40 margin. Dudley has 41-27 support among independents. They also offer an interesting breakdown by CD; it’s OR-04 that’s keeping Dudley in this, giving him a 44-38 edge, while predictably, Kitzhaber dominates in OR-01 and OR-03, Dudley sweeps OR-02, and they fight to a tie in OR-05.

• WY-Gov: OMG! Stop the presses! Veteran character actor and widely trusted commercial pitchman for products for old people (and Wyoming resident) Wilford Brimley has made an endorsement in the GOP gubernatorial primary. He’s backing state Auditor Rita Meyer. No word on whether he was won over by her pro-oatmeal stances.

• NJ-07: There’s an internal poll out from a Democrat? Not only that, but it’s from one who’s been totally off the radar, as national Dems seem to have ceded the 7th to freshman GOPer Leonard Lance. While the “informed ballot” numbers are the ones getting promoted (we at SSP think informed ballot questions are good… for us to poop on), there are legitimate toplines in there too, with Lance leading Ed Potosnak by a not-so-imposing 43-30. Lance also has a weak 31/46 re-elect number in the Garin Hart Yang poll.

• NM-02: Construction liens seem to be the common cold of political scandals, but Democratic freshman Harry Teague is in an uphill battle to retain his GOP-leaning seat and probably wouldn’t like any bad PR. He personally, and the four oil and gas industry companies he controls, are facing a civil lawsuit over failure to repay loans to purchase equipment.

• Ohio: PPP has some odds and ends left over from their Ohio sample. Two items are on the bad news side of the ledger, although only barely: a generic House ballot test for Ohio (where there are at least five competitive Democratic holds) has Republicans leading Democrats 44-43, and GOP ex-Sen. Mike DeWine is leading appointed Democratic AG Richard Cordray 44-41 in the Attorney General’s race. (Screw that; what about SoS race numbers?) The good news is that Sherrod Brown’s favorables have rebounded quite a bit since PPP’s last poll; he’s now at 38/38.

• NRCC: More expectations management from the NRCC? After previous pronouncements that John Boehner was looking to pick up 436 100 seats, now he’s sending out a fundraising e-mail that touts a 39-seat pickup as their target.

• RGA: Haley Barbour’s rolling around in a trough full of money today: the Republican Governors Association hauled in $19 million in the last fundraising quarter. Also suggesting that GOP fundraising is kicking into higher gear, American Crossroads, the Karl Rove venture that earned a whopping $200 in May, had a much better June: they raised $8.5 million.